The research presented in this proposal is concerned with the effects of semantic priming on memory retrieval. A common finding is that compared to performance in an unprimed control condition memory performance is better when people have been recently primed or cued with material that is semantically related to the to-be-retrieved information. This facilitation from semantic priming supports various associative models of memory that incorporate the notion of spreading activation. The present research is concerned with the theoretically interesting and less common cases of inhibitory semantic priming effects which have been demonstrated in both episodic and semantic memory tasks. The purpose of the proposed research is (a) to use improved methodologies to examine boundary conditions for these inhibitory semantic priming effects in both episodic and semantic recall and recognition tasks; (b) to determine whether these inhibitory semantic priming effects are due to automatic, nonattentional processes or strategic, attentional processes; and (c) to develop a theory that would account for both facilitatory and inhibitory semantic priming effects in both episodic and semantic recall and recognition tasks. Results from our experiments should have important implications for theories of semantic and episodic memory and perhaps for reading, where prior semantic context critically influences lexical access.